CTO Craft Slack Capture & Inference Skill

Capture valuable CTO Craft Slack conversations, store them in the wiki, and extract actionable inferences. This is a consume-phase workflow — input from an external community that feeds Insights → Produce.

When to Use

• Joseph pastes a Slack thread or conversation from CTO Craft
• Joseph asks to extract insights from stored CTO Craft threads
• Joseph wants a digest of patterns across captured threads
• Reviewing stored threads for consulting relevance ([client], SHIFT, coaching)

Don't use for: other Slack workspaces, general Slack messages, or non-CTO-Craft content.

Folder Structure

wiki/consume/cto-craft/
├── threads/          # One file per captured conversation
├── themes/           # Cross-cutting pattern documents
└── inferences.md     # Master list of distilled insights

Capture Workflow

When Joseph pastes a thread:

1. Parse the content — identify participants, topic, date (if visible), and the core discussion.

2. Anonymize if needed — use first names only or role titles ("VP Eng at fintech startup") unless Joseph says otherwise.

3. Tag the thread — assign 1-3 tags from the taxonomy below.

4. Write to threads/ — use the template (see below). Filename: YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md.

5. Update inferences.md — append any immediate actionable insights.

6. Check for theme matches — if 2+ threads share a theme, create or update a file in themes/.

Thread File Template

---
source: cto-craft-slack
channel: <channel-name>
participants: <anonymized or named>
summary: <one-line topic>
tags: [<tag1>, <tag2>]


<Title>

<YYYY-MM-DD>

<Full conversation content>

Key Points
- <Extracted insight 1>
- <Extracted insight 2>

Questions Raised
- <Open question for follow-up>

Tag Taxonomy

• platform-ops — platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps
• eng-leadership — managing engineers, team dynamics, org design
• scaling — scaling teams, systems, processes
• vendor-selection — choosing tools, vendors, build vs buy
• team-culture — culture, hiring, retention, remote work
• security — security practices, compliance, incident response
• ai-adoption — AI/ML in engineering orgs, tooling, strategy
• product-engineering — product-engineering collaboration, roadmap, delivery
• finance-ops — budgets, cost optimization, ROI discussions
• career — career growth, CTO role, executive dynamics

Inference Extraction

When extracting insights from threads or across the collection:

1. Frameworks — reusable mental models or decision frameworks mentioned.

2. Tools & Services — specific tools, vendors, or services referenced.

3. Pitfalls — anti-patterns, mistakes, or warnings from practitioners.

4. Decisions — how people decided between options (criteria, trade-offs).

5. Connections — link to Joseph's consulting work, SHIFT framework, or writing themes.

Periodic Digest

When running a digest (weekly or on-demand):

1. Scan all threads/ for a given period.

2. Cluster by tag.

3. Surface: top 3 actionable insights, emerging patterns, questions worth exploring.

4. Note any threads relevant to [client] consulting or upcoming blog post ideas.

5. Output to themes/digest-YYYY-MM-DD.md.

Verification

• Each thread file has valid frontmatter (source, tags, summary).
• inferences.md is updated after each capture session.
• Theme files exist only when 2+ threads support them.
• No PII beyond what Joseph explicitly approves.